


Barbarians

by Radiolaria



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Elliptic, Everything implied, F/M, Implied Character Death, Implied Sexual Content, Not Beta Read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-12
Updated: 2013-02-12
Packaged: 2017-11-29 00:35:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/680659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radiolaria/pseuds/Radiolaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How they suffer, how they cry, the psychopath and the spouse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Barbarians

**Author's Note:**

> Too much Hiroshima mon amour, too many Decadent poets.

There are times when she is so mad with love he can quite believe it, that she is a psychopath, a barbarian.

 

There are times when she whimpers at his touch as if he has just bent a bow. Times when she digs his skin as if her nails were poisonous. Times when she moulds him as if he were clay. Times when he looks down and realises he married a murderess.

 

There are times when she whispers mad things, cruel things, dangerous things for his distrustful heart.

 

'You lie so beautifully, my pagan queen.'

 

She crackles she will travel to the end of the Universe and find his time-worn body and she will skin him and turn his skin into sheets so that she could be forever in him.

She will be a savage and wear his teeth round her neck so that her collar will eternally bear the trace of his mouth.

She will tattoo the outline of his hands on her body so that her hands will always remember the path they took.

 

'I carved your name in stones, ancient and high, because they carved it into my head, they sewed it under my skin; my synapses are made of the breaths within your names.’

 

He knows alone, he knows no matter how deep she carves her name into his skins, into his hearts, into his brains, the memory of her will fade like everything else. There is no blade sharp or long enough to stand up to time.

 

Sometimes there is blood on their hands and it tastes like ecstasy. It tastes like rust. And rust is time.

 

***

 

He can't keep her forever. He can't put her through this forever. When the time will come to take her to Darillium, he will. He would not cheat her out of her death. He will grant her solace, in place of this half decaying, half combusting relationship that hurts her more and more  _and River, why do you keep on loving me? River, you are insane and River, I love you._

 

_And River, you are dead._

 

But he doesn't say the words, none of them. They are barbarians in this strange love affair and understand nothing but muscles and bones.

 

'River,' he says. ‘You are a liar.'

 

She switches on a smile, eyes unperturbed.

'And a dead one too. Cheat. In the end, you didn't even manage to keep that one from me.'

 

He’s a coward before her. He lies so beautifully.

 

_Show clemency, cloak your mortality, River._

_You'll stand up to crazed kings, defy the laws of gravity and face death; you'll behave like no god or hero behaved in the epics. You'll beat the Devil's tattoo on your allies’ bones. The sight of fear on your face might shatter my heart, thus you must remain fearless._   _I demand the impossible._

 

‘You are an impossible.’

 

She is, of course, challenged.

‘Anomaly in time. We orbit around you.’

He is terrified of what gave him this power over her.

 

Or the other way around.

 

_How can you fear I would tear away from you when you have such a strong hold on me?_

‘Do you? How very nice of you to share me with others.’

 

'I share but you won’t. I'll clobber your hearts till they are as soft and tender as breasts. I'll mark you. I want to imprint on you and your body will never find its original shape again. Let me mark you, so that there will be no time ever in the future when you forget my name, so not a day will pass without your flesh and bones mourning, aching, bruising from my body not being against yours. My love will leave you black and blue by its absence.'

 

'You savage. You must have learnt to love amongst some primitive forgotten tribe residing on the eve of time. Your lessons in lust you took from shrivelled manuscripts illuminated by dead mouldy hands. You studied and mapped, not bodies, their dips and curves and hooks, but the cold flesh of marbles. Archaeologist. My name rolls on your tongue as though you are chanting an ancient hymn, melody absorbed long ago by the legends, and your hips roll as drums echo in deserted valleys. You count and mend invisible scars and fissures and chips, while hovering above my body. You think I would not notice. You are a mad woman.”

 

Matter-of-factly:

‘Yes. I was obsessed with you, bordering on the insane. I am doctor-manic, schizo-some, socio-pathic. You married me.’

 

'Keep your friends close...'

 

_So be my hangman. As long as you can brand me, I have the illusion of you outliving me, of you killing me, again and again. But then, I see your face, your face laid waste after I died. I bury my self-hatred and kill you, River, again and again. I show clemency and cowardice. I can't bear to be the one who tricked you out of a life or a chance of happiness._

_Please, be not my lover, yet my executioner._

 

***

 

'I'll burn myself at your death'  _No, River, you burnt at your death_.

'I am that kind of woman. You, not loving me, are the only fire I need to set. It's corroding and eating me away. I choose it because you're here, you're around me, you're inside me. For a body to rot, for a chemical to dissolve, it needs to be plunged in the proper corrosive solution.’

 

 _Oh, but you were River_.  _And the engravings of my name upon your body did more than wane too. There is no mark profound enough to withstand fire._

 

He weeps sometimes at her side, tears running down on her ribs and puddling in the hollow of her flank. He's not a psychopath, he's not a killer, not hers. He's the devil.

 

_I’m wasting you, constantly._

‘You’re always worth it, my love.’

_Why do I let you choose? You would be alive._

_And not River Song._

_But now…_

_All the times you scream, you're alive. At least. You run, you're alive. You hurt, you're alive. At least. You're there, alive, still not dead._

 

How they cry, how they suffer, the psychopath and the spouse.

 

***

 

'You are very much dead,' he confesses one night to her recumbent form. 'Your mind carries on living a dream, dreaming a life. Your body was spent in a throne of metal, your crown was of wires and plastic spikes. Tin laurels and statics shroud. You burnt like quicksilver.' He thought he said.

 

He is unsure of his words, his silence.

 

'Let me rub off your skin till the singeing goes away, till the smell of burning flesh leaves you.' He might have said instead.

 

_Forgive me, River, for loving you is giving you the fuel that will eventually burn you._

He is certain he erased her memory of his words in the morning. Is that all there is left, to lose her memory?

He is the savage.

_Forgive me for not loving you every time I didn't. Forgive me for loving you every time I did._


End file.
